The answer is a Royal Family.
It may be nearly 4,000 miles away from the baking plains of the Punjab and slightly less awe inspiring than the glinting domes of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine, but the Norfolk market town of Thetford has become an unlikely place of pilgrimage for the world's 25 million Sikhs.
In a churchyard on an elaborate country estate just outside the town is the final resting place of His Highness Maharajadhiraja Sir Duleep Singh. Otherwise known as the last Maharaja of the Punjab, Duleep Singh's Sikh empire (including the famous 105 carat Koh-i-Noor diamond which now forms the crowning jewel in…the Crown Jewels) was annexed by the "Honourable" East India Company in 1849 when the young ruler was just a 10-year-old boy.
Taken into the care of a dour colonial surgeon, he swiftly shed his Punjabi customs, converted to Christianity and moved to England to live the life of a "respectable" country squire, shooting enormous numbers of animals on his estate and hosting decadent parties for Britain's Victorian elite.
It is not unusual to see Duleep Singh's grave within the grounds of Elveden Hall, or his equine statue in the centre of Thetford, strewn with bright orange marigolds and gifts brought by Sikh families who want to pay tribute to their unfortunate last ruler.
Now Thetford has acquired a new gravestone (left) made for an equally significant but relatively unknown Sikh ruler who also ended up dying in Britain, despite leading a life of open rebellion against the British in India. But this gravestone, which lay undiscovered under tonnes of rubble in a West London cemetery for over 100 years, was not made for a king, it was created for a queen: Duleep's mother Maharani Jind Kaur (above).
To say that Jind Kaur was a thorn in the side of the East India Company would be something of an understatement. The beautiful daughter of the Royal Kennel Keeper at the Sikh court in Lahore, she soon caught the eye of the Punjab's greatest ruler, the one-eyed Ranjit Singh, and became his favourite wife.
After Ranjit's death in 1839 his carefully crafted empire split into rival warring factions and eventually Jind Kaur emerged as regent in place of Duleep who was just nine months old at the time of his father's death.
Concerned about the instability to the west of their ever expanding territory in India, Britain began plotting the annexation of the Punjab, goading the Sikh armies into two ultimately disastrous wars that led to the disappearance of an indigenous Asian empire stretching from the Khyber Pass to the valleys of Kashmir and beyond.
To the British, Jind Kaur was instrumental in organising the Sikh resistance, rallying her generals to return to battle and supposedly plotting rebellion once the British finally took over the Punjab in 1849. The same year, in order to halt her influence on the young Duleep, the Punjab's new colonial masters dragged the Maharani away from her son in the middle of the night and placed her in prison. In a final act of defiance Jind Kaur escaped her gaolers dressed as a slave girl and fled to Nepal where she was reluctantly granted asylum by the mountain kingdom's rulers.
But what makes Jind Kaur's story really remarkable is that despite being separated from Duleep for 13 years, she managed to reignite Sikh nationalism in her English country gent of a son. Towards the end of his life, the "Black Prince" – as he was often called in Britain – grew increasingly bitter at the way his kingdom and people had been taken from him and began concoting notions of reconquering his homeland, even travelling to cow disguised as a Fenian to try to persuade the Tsar of Russia to join his hopeless cause. He died penniless and heartbroken in a Paris hotel room, his dream of regaining his kingdom shattered and his reputation in Britain ruined.
Harbinder Singh, director of the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail, believes it was once Duleep met his mother again after 13 years of separation and brought her back to London, that he suddenly realised what he had given up as a boy.
"In a way she had the last laugh," he said. "When you look at the life of Duleep Singh, the moment where he began to turn his back on Britain and rebel was only once he'd met his mother. The British assumed that this frail looking woman, who was nearly blind and had lost her looks, was no longer a force to be reckoned with. She reminded her son of who he was and where his kingdom really lay."
Harbinder believes the discovery of Jind Kaur gravestone, which temporarily rested on her grave in Kensal Green Cemetary while her son prepared to return her body to India for cremation, will encourage many more Sikhs to pay a visit to the Norfolk countryside. "Thetford has become a place of cultural pilgrimage for Sikhs, it's an incredibly emotional place," he said. "I've seen grown men reduced to tears at the graves of the last Maharajas of the Punjab as they wonder how it came to pass that the last remnants of a once great empire lies buried in a Norfolk churchyard."
If you want to know more:
You can see Jind Kaur's gravestone at the Ancient House Museum in Thetford, along with a exhibition about the town's Punjabi Royal Family.
Harbinder Singh's Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail is a great place to learn about Britain and the Punjab's intertwined histories.
The historian Peter Bance, who runs the website www.duleepsingh.com has written a number of books on Thetford's forgotten royals. "The Duleep Singhs" has some fantastic photos of the family's life both in the Punjab and in Norfolk.